Shortly after the economic crisis, exports started to grow at a fast rate and became a driving force of Latvia’s economic growth, but the growth subsided soon and even turned into a slight decrease in 2016. On the whole, last year was negative for Latvia’s foreign trade as export volumes decreased by 0.3% and import volumes contracted a bit more, by 1.7%. Economists were fairly optimistic about prospects for Latvia’s foreign trade growth last year, but this year there are objective conditions for improving these results.

Estonia, seen as an excellent example of a balanced economy, has been stagnating the past several years. Last year was no different, as economic growth was projected at over 2%, but in reality was below 2%. Despite the slow growth, Estonia remains an attractive country, which has been noticed by the World Bank in its annual Doing Business 2017 ranking, as it has jumped up to 12th place amongst 189 countries around the world.

The number of employed persons in Latvia was 895,000 or 61.8% of the population aged 15-74 years in the third quarter of 2016The registered unemployment level was at 9.5% of the economically active population in the third quarter of 2016Unemployment in 2020 is planned at 8.2% (the Finance Ministry projects)

Shortly after the economic crisis, exports started to grow at a fast rate and became a driving force of Latvia’s economic growth, but the growth subsided soon and even turned into a slight decrease in 2016